The environmental imperative

We presently have greater scientific

understanding of human-induced stresses

on natural systems and unprecedented

individual and collective access to

information about these issues. The weight

of evidence traces the roots of current

environmental problems to the fact that

industrialised societies operate within a

social and economic system that implicitly

con siders human activity dominant over,

and essentially independent of, the

ecosystems. Coupled with the low efficiency

that natural resources are ‘converted into

useful, sustainable products and life-

supporting services’ (Talbot and Magnoli,

2000, see also Hawken et al., 1999), all

meaningful indicators suggest that the

resulting current patterns of human activity

and settlement are not sustainable. Given

the pressing timescale of criti cal

environmental issues such as climate

change, it is difficult to imagine that a

sustainable system of production and

consumption will emerge simply from minor

changes to current practices. A key issue,

therefore, lies in the considerable difference

between the levels of change that the

scientific community is advocating and those

that are socially, economi cally, and

politically acceptable. Resource use and the

resulting environmental degradation have,

of course, always been unavoidable parts of

human existence. Although historically these

effects have often been intense and

catastrophic, they have been geographically

specific and modest in scale compared with

the biological production and assimilative

capabilities of the planet. Many environ

mental problems in the recent past, such as

toxic industrial emissions, logging old-

growth forests, oil slicks, dioxins, asbestos,

illegal dumping, etc., have also been

localised, highly visible, and politically

charged. 2 Buildings, Culture and

Environment However, since society as a

whole has generally benefited from their

remediation, ‘. . . progressive action has

been possible, if not always easy’ (Burke,

1996). The recognition of the types and

scales of environ mental issues have also

changed considerably since the early 1980s.

Although specific challenges will continue to

emerge with any funda mental transition

toward sustainability, these challenges will

increasingly be subsumed by a much more

complex and less distinct set of issues.

Despite the increasing intensity and

frequency of environmentally related

catastrophes, the most critical threats to

sustainability are now recognised as taking

the form of ‘cumulative, slow, and gradual

processes’ (Gladwin et al., 1997, p. 243). The

current scale and the types of human activity

are producing impacts that are both

dispersed and close to or exceeding global

limits of ecological assimilation (Rees, 1999).

Moreover, rather than being directly

apparent, adverse environmental effects are

now ‘revealed in a growing body of scientific

data . . .’ (Guy and Farmer, 2000, p. 74).

Information transfer versus knowledge

exchange The built environment can be

characterised as the embodiment of human

values and ingenuity, as represented by the

knowledge and priorities of its creators.

Further, the acquisition and assimilation of

the knowledge to create the built

environment are clearly shaped by a broad

range of con textual issues. It is important to

distinguish between the notions of

‘information’ and ‘knowledge’ in the

development and acquisition of new ideas

and skills to improve the environmental

performance of buildings. Knowledge is not

easily transferable and is attached to an

individual or group. Unlike information, it is

context dependent. As Gann makes clear in

Chapter 4, knowledge is a deeper

understanding of a subject (the ‘why’) and

also entails capabilities of assessment to

form judgement, interpre tation and

understanding. By contrast, information is

simply data which can be stored and

distributed. By itself information does not

provide any significant or deep

understanding and limits the users who act

upon it. Publications and other forms of

information are important vehicles for the

formal exchange of explicit knowledge

between researchers and prac titioners. By

contrast, tacit knowledge (know-how) is

acquired through practice, and its transfer

requires person-to-person contact, and

individual learning and experience. Such

knowledge is central to the building design

Introduction: Knowledge, Values and

Building Design 3 and construction process,

and this is provided largely through the

experi ence of the diverse members of the

design team. Similar distinctions must clearly

be recognised in the cross-cultural transfer

of information and knowledge. Building

information has been, and continues to be,

trans ferred with the re-interpretation of

texts in foreign contexts, international

conferences and more recently via

information and communications tech

nologies. Absorption of relocated

information into knowledge could be slow,

evolving and adapting to incumbent social

and physical surround ings or fast in

response to political will or unforeseen

disaster. Similarly, tacit knowledge has also

been, and continues to be transferred.

Historically, this moved slowly with

migrating populations and became mediated

by changes in political, social and economic

structures and in response to differences in

climate and materials. Movement of skilled

people (either permanently through

immigration or temporarily through

exchanges and international consortia and

projects) accelerates the inter action and

exchange of knowledge. Tijssen (2001)

identifies that local and national based on a

‘web of per sonal relationships’ are often a

crucial element in knowledge transfer

processes since they create and store an

accumulation of capabilities. Tijssen further

emphasises that ‘. . . effective science–

technology inter faces are primarily human

in character and hinge on person-embodied

“tacit” knowledge and skills’. Further, he

suggests: ‘. . . in order to develop and exploit

new knowledge, or to transfer exist ing

forms of knowledge, research performers

and users therefore often engage in close

and informal interaction. These personal

links and trans fer channels are usually a key

feature of domestic science–technology

interfaces and are profoundly influenced by

proximity and by social and cultural factors’

(Tijssen, 2001). The importance of the

interpersonal communications in terms of

both research and technological innovation

evident above suggests the benefits tend to

be ‘geographically and linguistically

localised’ (Pavitt, 1998). Implications for the

built environment The scale and complexity

of global environmental problems require an

unprecedented degree of international

cooperation and the sharing of sound

environmental knowledge and practices.

This may stimulate the creation of new

abilities to understand and interpret data,

case studies and 4 Buildings, Culture and

Environment other information from

‘foreign’ sources. Paradoxically, the trend

toward an international culture has

significantly increased the potential for con

siderable access to and dissemination of

building-related environmental information

from almost any part of the world.

Information and commu nication

technologies have also added yet another

powerful homogenis ing mechanism. The

result of enhanced communication is often

not cultural convergence, but deepening

incomprehension and an increasing failure of

buildings to perform as intended. Moreover,

the movement towards the adoption of

performance-based codes and regulations is

cre ating an international building design and

research culture which risks homogenisation

and the establishment of inappropriately

high standards. The authors in this book

consider the problem of understanding the

local culture as an important key to creating

buildings which have good fit, func tion well

and are durable. Local culture embraces

values, symbols, mean ings and

understandings, climate, resources and

history with their convergence as a way of

life – the practical ways in which things are

per formed and achieved. Although we live

in an increasingly globalised society with an

increasing amount of global building types,

Shields sug gests in Chapter 3 that we are

able simultaneously to negotiate a number

of different levels of built environment from

global portals to the local. The lesson is that

the generic, anonymous, homogenised,

global built envi ronments actually reinforce

the need (and desire) for the local, culturally

embedded buildings and environments. The

challenge is to avoid the ersatz historical

pastiche and engage with a living culture as

Kohler (Chapter 6), Oliver (Chapter 15) and

Cohen et al. (Chapter 18) argue. Improving

building performance is not only a

technological question, it embraces the

users’ expectations of comfort. Brager and

de Dear (Chapter 11) discuss the dilemma of

how local expectations have been raised to

inap propriate levels and make the

important distinction between deep cultural

values and transitory life styles.

Contemporary life style expectations in the

developed world are both unrealistic and

unsustainable. However, since they are also

malleable, the need for positive intervention

and change at a social and cultural level is

clearly a critical concern. Technological

change Scientific and technological

development has a direct bearing on envi

ronmental progress. Pavitt (1998) suggests

that patterns of scientific strengths and

weaknesses ‘are strongly influenced by the

nature of the societal and technological

problems to be solved’. This is echoed by

Leaman in Chapter 10, which uses the notion

of ‘cultural perceptions of Introduction:

Knowledge, Values and Building Design 5 risk

and hazards’ to describe how significant

environmental constraints are manifest in a

country’s competence in overcoming them.

For the vast majority of the world’s

population, day-to-day survival dominates

human activity. Homer-Dixon (1995)

suggests that, as scarcity worsens, some

poor societies will face a widening ‘ingenuity

gap’, further compromising their abilities to

respond, adapt creatively to changing

conditions and eventually chart a path to

recovery. This is compounded by a necessary

investment of public expenditure on

academic research to create a country’s

capacity for technical change (Pavitt, 1998).

By contrast, depending on how they are

deployed, the collective intellectual and

economic resources of the industrialised

nations suggest a future with a capacity for

change and adaptation. Given the

complexity of environmental problems,

solutions are likely to require an

unprecedented degree of international

cooperation and com munication. The

sharing of sound environmental practices at

a variety of levels will be increasingly

necessary and demanded. However, the

exchange of information and technologies

raises profound issues regard ing the

recognition and maintenance of cultural

continuity. The tradi tional transfer of

technologies across regional and

international borders had often occurred at

a slow rate of diffusion and also allowed for

the social and cultural adaptation of the

technology by local inhabitants. By contrast,

the ease and speed of contemporary

information and tech nological exchange

leaves little opportunity for its considered

assimila tion. In addition to the obvious

adverse homogenising effects, such

practices typically incur environmental costs

and dependencies. Sufficient evidence exists

that the performance of buildings through

time will be compromised unless

technological advances are respectful of

personal expectation and cultural values.

Simply stated, design strategies that are

considered inappropriate by users will

invariably be replaced or disregarded – often

at significant cost to retrofit those deemed

more acceptable. Solutions to complex

problems that involve a wide range of scales

of influence and time frames require the

ability to appreciate and address linkages

and interrelationships between a broad

range of often conflict ing requirements.

However, Gladwin et al. (1997) suggest that

people tend toward ‘. . . simplicity in causal

mapping, and engage in isolated, one factor-

at-a-time analysis rather than dynamic

whole-systems appraisal’. Although the

majority of contemporary academic and

industrial research uses methods and

techniques within the confines of specific

disciplines, 6 Buildings, Culture and

Environment the capacity to cope with

emerging complex problems depends on an

increasing range and combination of

complementary fields of technical

knowledge. Indeed, leading-edge firms are ‘.

. . becoming increasingly “multi-technology”,

incorporating a growing number of fields of

knowl edge into their problem-solving

armory’ (Pavitt, 1998). Building design also

requires the resolution and synthesis of a

broad range of human and technical issues.

Yet this process has historically been frag

mented with specific issues falling into the

realm of specialist consult ants and

examined largely independent of their

impact on, or interaction with, others. These

professional barriers have only recently been

breached through increased commitment to

more integrated approaches to design.

Integrated design, however, is not only a

matter of bringing the design team’s

members together at the outset of a project.

Setting performance targets, developing a

shared view of the project, improving the

quality of communication and information to

guide design and ensuring an appro priate

cultural/social fit are central to creating

quality buildings within tight economic and

time constraints. The exchange of building

information and technologies is increasingly

occurring largely in arrogance or ignorance

of local cultures and traditions. As

commodities turn increasingly into

‘information’, the distinction between a

product and a service begins to blur. This will

invariably require a greater understanding of

the way in which information and technolo

gies are ultimately used and therefore

require a greater understanding of the

cultural context. Almost all sustainability and

building environmental concepts are uni

versal in their validity. However, if these are

to be successful then the specific

interpretation and manifestation in design

should reflect local context. In too much

contemporary green design a literal transfer

of technological strategies occurs without

any serious critiques of either their local

validity or engagement by building

occupants. A key factor will be developing

supply side capabilities to assess critically

and adapt global information to local cultural

expectations and use, coupled with local

climatic conditions, materials and

technologies. This book provides a series of

perspectives on the cross-cultural transfer of

building environmental knowledge. It

initiates a discourse to address a series of

questions for the many stakeholders in the

built environment: the owners of buildings,

the occupants, the designers, the education

and research community, regulators and

policy makers as follows: Introduction:

Knowledge, Values and Building Design 7 •

The ways that human/social/cultural

expectations and acceptance limit

technological advances and performance

improvements at the level of individual

buildings, large developments, cities and

policy/ regulation. • The conflict between

regionally appropriate environmental

building practices within an increasingly

global technical and economic culture. •

How knowledge on environmentally

progressive building can legiti mately be

transferred across cultures without

compromising regional and local practices. •

Does the built environment supply chain

sufficiently understand and embrace the

local cultural expectations? • What new

capabilities are needed? Do the providers of

information currently have the capabilities

to understand the cultural contexts of the

users of building information? Do the users

of this information have the capabilities to

successfully translate it into knowledge

which embraces local culture and

expectations? However, the pressing issues

of disparity between developed and devel

oping countries along with issues of

knowledge and technological exchange

between them are specifically excluded from

this book. The f irst, and relatively simpler,

stage consists of examining these issues to

understand similar industrialised countries

where a considerable dispar ity exists

between necessary improvements in

building design and will ingness to commit to

environmental responsibility.

Environmentally progressive and sustainable

buildings will occur when the supply side has

a much improved knowledge of and

engagement with clients’, occupants’ and

users’ needs and expectations while

simultane ously engaging with appropriate

environmental practices. References Brand,

S. (1999) The Clock of the Long Now, Time

and Responsibility. Weiden feld & Nicolson,

London. Burke, T. (1996) The Earth now

needs smarter friends. The Independent 6

May 1996, p. 15. Gladwin, T.N., Newberry,

W.E. and Reiskin, E.D. (1997) Why is the

Northern elite mind biased against

community, the environment, and a

sustainable future. In: Environmental Ethics

and Behaviour (eds H. Bazerman, D.M.

Messick, A.E. Tenbrunsel and K.A. Wade-

Benzoni) pp. 234–274, The New Lexington

Press, San Francisco. 8 Buildings, Culture and

Environment Guy, S. and Farmer, G. (2000)

Contested constructions: the compelling

logics of green buildings and ethics. In: Ethics

and the Built Environment (ed. W. Fox),

Routledge, London. Hawken, P., Lovins, A.

and Lovins, L.H. (1999) Natural Capitalism,

Changing the Next Industrial Revolution.

Little, Brown and Company, New York.

Homer-Dixon, T. (1995) The ingenuity gap:

can poor countries adapt to resource

scarcity? Population and Development

Review, 21, (3), 587–612. Pavitt, K. (1998)

The social shaping of the national science

base. Research Policy, 27, (8), December

1998, 793–805. Rees, W.E. (1999) The built

environment and the ecosphere: a global

perspective. Building Research and

Information 27, (4–5), 206–220. Talbot, R.

and Magnoli, G.C. (2000) Social inclusion and

the sustainable city. In: Ethics and the Built

Environment (ed. W. Fox), Routledge,

London, 89–90. Tijssen, R.J.W. (2001) Global

and domestic utilization of industrial

relevant science: patent citation analysis of

science–technology interactions and knowl

edge flows. Research Policy, 30, (ER1), 35–

54. Section I Understanding Context 2

Section introduction Understanding Context

Ian Cooper Buildings as expressions of

culture Buildings and settlement patterns

are material expressions of the cultures that

construct them. Deeply embedded in them

are hosts of (barely per ceived and so largely

unspoken) assumptions about: • what are

deemed appropriate patterns of production,

consumption and other forms of social,

economic and political behaviour; and •

hence what is valued and what is not by

those who control and regu late the

production, operation and management of

the built environ ment in a specific culture.

As a consequence, individual buildings (and

their agglomeration into towns and cities)

stand as highly concrete and durable

statements: • not just about prevailing

patterns of power and privilege between

people; • but of preferred relationships

between humans and other species (both f

lora and fauna), materials and other

resources too. Even within a single culture,

these issues – and the built environments

that give expression to them – are often

hotly contested, particularly between those

who hold power and those, with opposing

world views, who seek to challenge them.

Seemingly neutral information and

technologies – of the kind enshrined in

design guidance and standards about how

buildings should be built or cities be laid out

– are, in practice, tacit surrogates for often

intractably 12 Buildings, Culture and

Environment opposed views of how we

could and should live. The tacit, taken-for

granted nature of such design guidance and

standards begins to become clearer when

we start to consider exchanging them

between cultures. Once this is proposed,

arguments are raised about the

appropriateness of such exchange. In design

and development circles, these arguments

are often couched in the vocabulary of

understanding and responding to ‘context’ in

order, for instance, to protect local identities

or cultural heritage. Seen from this vantage

point, a key issue in this debate is the

(mis)use of information and technologies

when they are moved from one culture to

another, typically from a more ‘developed’

country to a less ‘developed’ one – more

rarely vice versa. This debate is the focus of

attention in Chapters 3 to 6 of this book.

They illustrate sharply divergent

interpretations placed on exchanging infor

mation about, and technologies for, the

design of environmentally ‘pro gressive’

building between cultures. Each of the four

authors starts from a different perspective:

see Fig. 2.1. The perspectives offered

scarcely touch, although the concerns they

raise do overlap. Apart from agreeing that

such cross-cultural transfer is problematic,

they share surprisingly little ground about

how or why to tackle it. This is largely

because they confront the exchange of

knowledge involved by drawing on widely dif

fering discipline backgrounds and

conceptual frameworks. Sociology

Innovation theory Globalisation Information

and technology transfer Environmental

performance of buildings Regionalism

Architectural science Fig. 2.1 Different

perspectives applied to knowledge exchange

Understanding Context 13 A sociological

perspective In Chapter 3, Shields offers a

sociological perspective. He starts with an

overview of the unfolding debate about

globalisation. He argues that this has

proceeded through at least two stages.

Initially globalisation was cas tigated as a

wave of (Western) cultural imperialism that

was causing global homogenisation by

eradicating local differences. Now, in the

social sci ences at least, it is recognised that

globalisation involves many contra dictory

processes and can, as a result, have widely

diverse outcomes. So, instead of being

monolithic, he portrays globalisation as

complex and plu ralistic. He suggests it is

resulting in two processes, hybridity and

adap tation, that blur the conventional

boundaries between categories such as the

‘global’ and the ‘local’, with partial adoptions

from one place occur ring in another. For

Shields, however, what is significant about

globalisation for architec ture is the

production of globalised built environments

– relatively stan dardised spaces epitomised

by airport terminals, international hotels,

and tourist or sporting facilities. Often these

are branded spaces such as restau rant

franchises, covered by copyrighted design.

These anonymous, non place, spaces are

seen as being without historical precedent.

They are described as being dominated by a

devotion to mobility and movement,

without any sense of fixity, place or local

identity. Significantly, such repetitive

environments require, regardless of local

conditions, sup porting infrastructures

capable of delivering internationalised

standards of health and safety.

Consequently, they act as portals for flows

between localities, deploying innovations

from one place in another location or

jurisdiction. The significance of global

buildings – especially branded spaces such as

Planet Hollywood – is then that, like satellite

TV, for instance, they act as interfaces for

flows between localities. But, while TV offers

demateri alised glimpses into foreign ideas

about distant ways of life, global build ings

are physically present, locally grounded

artefacts, yet often based on equally distant,

internationalised design standards and

practices. An ‘innovation theory’ perspective

In Chapter 4, Gann sets off from an entirely

different starting point. He draws on

innovation theory, identifying a range of

factors as creating new requirements for

international exchange of knowledge about

how and what is built: 14 Buildings, Culture

and Environment • globalisation of markets

and production; • development and

exploitation of technical opportunities (here

ICTs and smart, green, buildings); •

demographic, social and economic changes –

ageing populations and resource scarcity; •

global environmental change; and • pan-

national regulations and protocols for

dealing with the impact of climate change.

Gann’s argument is driven by a perceived

need to design buildings that are both

sustainable and sensitive to their local

context. He believes that, to confront these

pressures, design organisations,

construction firms, and research institutions

need to develop better approaches to the

exchange of information and knowledge.

Gann explores two separate aspects of

knowledge exchange. First, he focuses on

how professionals from different cultures

learn from one another. And, second, he

concentrates on how knowledge can be

shared between professionals from different

disciplines – particular in project based

working environments. These two aspects of

knowledge exchange are discussed within a

framework formed by six concepts drawn

from innovation theory: • national systems

of innovation; • networks of innovators; •

communities of practice; • the role of

research processes; • the absortive capacity

of individual firms; and • the management of

firms’ dynamic capabilities. Gann believes

that built environment professionals should

be well placed to share and exchange

knowledge between disciplines because

they often work in teams as ‘systems

integrators’. But their capacity to do so is

hindered by organisational processes

employed in construction projects,

especially where cross-cultural and

interdisciplinary knowledge has to be

exchanged. And he concludes that

identification of commonly agreed

definitions of sustainable buildings is not

currently available, let alone commonly

defined actions and solutions. Designers,

planners and devel Understanding Context

15 opers typically learn to work within the

limits of their own bioregion. He questions

how much of the knowledge they acquire

can be transferred, cross-culturally, outside

the context that created it. A socialised

‘architectural science’ perspective In

Chapter 5, Cole grounds his argument in, but

is highly critical of, the traditional approach

of architectural science to knowledge

exchange. This is, he suggests, typically

technically framed, focused on technical

systems and, in this context, their potential

for reducing resource use and envi

ronmental impact. However, he sees the

performance of ‘green’ buildings as being

severely compromised if they fail to account

adequately for their inhabitants’ needs,

expectations and behaviour. Accordingly,

robust solu tions to green buildings have to

be culturally grounded and will depend on

major changes in human values and actions.

As a result, he calls for reconciliation

between technological change (what is

technically possible) and occupant

engagement (what occupants expect and

aspire to). This means turning our attention

to those aspects of human expectation,

behaviour and culture – such as values and

world views, especially in relation to comfort

and environmental control – that can

usefully inform clients and designers when

making strategic decisions about building

design. Cole believes that addressing the

environmental agenda will require both

significant improvements in building

performance beyond current prac tice and

appreciable technological change. However,

this transitional period will need to be

carefully managed. While the concepts

behind the design of green buildings are

seen as being universal, their interpretation

and realisation needs to be context-specific.

He criticises the supply side of the

construction industry for transferring

‘foreign’ technologies and design standards

across regional and cultural boundaries

without under standing local contexts. Cole

sees a key factor in the success of green

building practices being the development of

supply side capabilities that can critically

assess and adapt global information to local

cultural expec tations, habits and patterns of

living, coupled with local climatic condi tions,

materials and technologies. Cole warns that

the willingness of building users to accept

and engage in green building strategies

cannot be assumed. Evidence suggests that,

con fronted by green buildings, occupants

may make changes to realign them to more

conventional expectations, thereby

reversing their intended envi ronmental

benefits. So ensuring the success of green

buildings may require 16 Buildings, Culture

and Environment a transitional period that

enables users to undertake the necessary

learning, reassessment and accustomisation

to different conditions if they are not to

revert to old expectations and habits. In turn,

this will require a longer and more

comprehensive view of building

performance as well as of how the success or

failure of environmental strategies are

judged. A regionalist perspective Finally, in

Chapter 6, Kohler adopts a regionalist

perspective. He attempts a synthesis of two

previously separate notions and scales –

global ecolog ical carrying capacity and

regional cultural diversity. His thesis is that

the prevailing technocratic approach to

‘green’ buildings will ultimately fail because

current attempts to transfer ‘progressive’

environmental tech nologies are not based

on a sound knowledge of the intended host

regional cultures. He argues that a region’s

existing stock of buildings and the form of its

urban fabric should be seen as an essential

part of its cultural diver sity. So, for Kohler,

cross-cultural transfer of information and

technolo gies for green buildings has to begin

with specific consideration of the context to

which such transfer is being proposed.

Fundamentally, however, he believes that

there is no conflict between delivering

region ally appropriate and environmentally

appropriate buildings. The apparent conflict

between these twin goals is a pernicious

product of the anti regional ‘international

style’ championed by the modern movement

in architecture during the twentieth century.

Echoing Shields’s description of the first

stage in the debate about global isation in

the social sciences, Kohler decries the

imperative to export ‘pro gressive’

environmental practices from European (or

more broadly OECD) countries, especially to

transitional or developing economies, as a

form of cultural imperialism incompatible

with the protection of regional cultural

identities. And Kohler defines protecting

such identities as a critical com ponent of

sustainable development, enshrined by the

Treaty of European Union in the principle of

‘subsidiarity’. Kohler concludes that there is

a clear difference between ‘green’ and ‘sus

tainable’ approaches to the production and

maintenance of the built envi ronment. In

‘green’ approaches, he argues, the emphasis

is on limits to environmental factors

(resource use and pollution), while in a

sustainable approach the focus is on

achieving synergies between environmental,

eco nomic and social objectives, using

scalable indicators linked to an inter

generational perspective. ‘Globalisation’, in

the form of internationalised Understanding

Context 17 markets, disregards regional

cultural traditions and so is judged incapable

of delivering a stable, long-term, framework

for development. Partial views Each of the

perspectives offered in these four chapters

offers its own insights into the problems of

cross-cultural information and technology

transfer. But each of them is also partial.

Each offers a view of knowledge exchange

from within a specific conceptual

framework. And, although this is rarely made

explicit (except by Kohler) each is

underpinned by a different set of values or

ethical standpoint. So each highlights and so

‘values’ a different set of factors that need to

be taken into account when trying to

exchange knowledge about environmentally

‘progressive’ build ings between cultures. 3

Globalisation – Entangled Places, Interface

Buildings, Generic Design Rob Shields This

chapter provides an overview of social,

cultural and economic debates on

globalisation as a basis for discussing

globalisation in relation to the built

environment. At first, globalisation was

widely believed to be the antithesis of

approaches which emphasised sensitivity to

local context and the merit of local cultures.

But further research on globalisation over

the decade and a half since the mid-1980s

has shown that globalisation involves many

contradictory processes and has diverse

outcomes. It has forced a rethinking of

locality and context dependency. The

situation is not a matter of simple

homogenisation. The debate has developed

away from a binary opposition of either

global standardisation or local dis

tinctiveness. In place of this dualism, a

pattern of hybridity and adapta tion has

emerged, displacing the ‘local or global’ view

of globalisation which held sway in the early

1980s. Definitions and debates on globali

sation are followed by a discussion of the

implications of hybridity, the blurring of

conventional boundaries, and the ‘virtual’

quality of both ‘the global’ and ‘the local’.

The categories of ‘the global’ and ‘the local’

mask the complexity of partial adoptions

from one place in another and their

naturalisation, a cultural process that is

discussed under the label of ‘creolisation’.

One aspect of globalisation is the spread of

generic spaces and design in relation to

generic uses (such as airport terminals). To

what extent can one meaningfully speak of a

‘globalised built environment’ or relatively

standardised spaces, technologies and uses?

Do these presume equally generic uses?

There is a long-running tendency in design

schools to treat Entangled Places, Interface

Buildings, Generic Design 19 architecture as

a set of global principles. Construction, on

the other hand, is relegated to the local, to

craft traditions, the capacity of the bodies of

labourers, the genius loci and logistics of the

site. Thus, in the built environment one finds

both local forms and recognisable

representatives of international ‘styles’,

materials, uses (building types) and technical

approaches. The latter are nonetheless

usually both adapted to local con ditions and

tuned to generic, globalised functions.

Buildings and even large-scale projects are

not isolated entities but set in a context of

related facilities and needs which might be

literally ‘next door’ or at some dis tance –

the next rail or bus station, or airport.

Definitions Globalisation has been called

‘the’ concept by which we name the current

moment and the transition into the third

millennium AD. It is not only a theory of

social space, but also a social theory of time

born in, and highlighting, specific worries

and opportunities. Most social scientists

writing in European languages seem to

accept that some such process is under way.

Where there is debate, it concerns the

impact of globalisation and whether or not it

is fundamentally new or rather a new wave

of a process which has been ongoing for the

last 400 years of European expansion and

Westernisation – something more typically

referred to as ‘modernisation’. But what

exactly is globalisation? Globalisation is a

descriptive term which ‘names’ the current

moment. This has been described as the

emer gence of a trans-national social order

which transcends previous economic models

of internationalisation. Writing for a student

audience, Waters (2001, p. 5) defines

globalisation as: ‘A social process in which

the constraints of geography on economic,

political, social and cultural arrangements

recede, in which people become increasingly

aware that they are receding and in which

people act accordingly.’ The Oxford English

Dictionary finds uses of ‘the global’ dating

back 400 years, but to speak of something as

‘globalised’ and ‘globalisation’ are mid

twentieth century turns of phrase (see The

Economist (4/4/1959); Specta tor

(5/10/1962); Webster’s Dictionary (1961)).

The French were writing about the global, le

planetaire, as a question of scale in the 1970s

(Lefebvre, 1991). Academic recognition of

‘globalisation’ is signalled by the argument

and collation of 1980s theories of trade and

the dissemina 20 Buildings, Culture and

Environment tion of notions of Western

civility and civil society. The seminal text was

Roland Robertson’s book Globalization

(1992; see also Robertson and Lechiner,

1985): ‘Globalization as a concept refers

both to the compression of the world and

the intensification of consciousness of the

world as a whole. . . ’. Robertson, 1992, p. 8

Such definitions all emphasise a process of

‘thinking up’ and linking up from a local to a

trans-national scale. In dictionaries,

globalisation has continued to mean

‘diffusion’ and export on a world-wide scale.

However, academic analyses reveal not only

the spectre of a homogenised global cultural

and economic space, but a simultaneous

phenomenon involving the take-up of

regional cultures internationally. This

involves the cre ation, in many cases, of new

hybrids as ideas and products from

elsewhere are integrated with local practice

and conditions. Albrow summarises

globalisation as ‘all those processes by which

the peoples of the world are incorporated

into a single world society, global society’

(Albrow, 1990; cited in Pieterse, 1993).

Antecedents Globalisation rests on a number

of antecedents, none of which is as broad as

the current term. For example, Marx was

committed to a globalising theory of

capitalism, especially in regard to the

exploitation of European colonies and the

establishment of a ‘world market’. This took

place by opening up navigation to Asia

(Marx, 1964, p. 222). But Marx’s view was

that the nation-state would remain

unchallenged until the emergence of a

world-wide proletarian movement. Marxian

dependency theory (e.g. Amin, 1980) and

functionalist modernisation theory (Levy,

1966) inherit the assumption of an economic

globalisation alongside national political and

cultural identities. World-system theory

(Wallerstein, 1974) prefigures globalisation

theory. It is not only economically

deterministic but the notion of ‘world’ which

Wallerstein uses is phenomenological not

geo graphical. Thus, the Roman Empire is a

‘world’ (Wallerstein, 1974, p. 348). The state

stabilises this process, rather than being

challenged by it, and a multiplicity of

separate cultures is envisioned (Waters,

2001, p. 11). These are important differences

from the globalisation theories and debates

of the late twentieth century. Entangled

Places, Interface Buildings, Generic Design

21 In political science and law, the

emergence of trans-national political

spheres has been understood as the

emergence of a dual system in which states

retain sovereignty even while developing

and being challenged by a series of

‘multilateral’ institutions (Burton, 1972;

Rosenau, 1990). McLuhan’s notion of a

‘global village’ is one of the first to focus on

culture in the context of the expansion of

television media (Carpenter and McLuhan,

1970, p. xi). Other accounts neglect culture,

defer examining the cultural impact of

economic globalisation or argue that culture

remains autonomous (Wallerstein, 1991). By

contrast, late twentieth century theories of

globalisation suggest the relativisation of at

least parts of local cultures and the

displacement of the effectivity and integrity

of the nation-state both as a polity and as an

‘imagined community’. Economically,

globalisation has extended the influence and

profits of an elite group of companies. Most

of these are based in Europe, North America

and Japan, but regional players follow closely

behind. If globali sation is Japanese cars and

Microsoft Windows it is also Finland-based

Nokia mobile phones, or Mexico-based

Cemex concrete, not to mention

conglomerates in South Asia, South America

and South Africa. Some of the greatest

challenges posed by globalisation are at the

level of the impact of low-priced commodity

goods which now circulate more widely due

to the lowering of tariff barriers – Chinese

rice exported to Thailand, for example. Thus

rather than a problem of architectural style

or lifestyle it is likely to be a smaller scale of

genetics and geology – the geographic

sources and destinations of rice strains and

aggregates. The cultural perspective

Globalisation theories received a boost in

attention with the coming together of

Wallerstein’s approach with the historical

studies of colonial architecture and

urbanism of Anthony King. King’s historical

sociology of colonial forms, notably the

adoption of the South Asian bungalow in

Britain, emphasised the linkages and flows of

not only commodities but ideas, styles and

consumption forms, between parts of the

British Empire (King, 1984). Culture,

Globalization and the World-System (King,

1991) emerged out of a symposium at

Binghamton University (NY) which brought

the two approaches together. The two

strands in the late twentieth century

globalsation debate empha sise

homogenisation, on the one hand, and

hybridisation on the other. In 22 Buildings,

Culture and Environment architectural

theory of the early 1980s, Kenneth Frampton

posed regional cultural identities as a critical

basis for resisting ‘universalisation’. This

process implied the destruction of the ‘. . .

creative nucleus of great cultures, that

nucleus on the basis of which we interpret

life, what I shall call in advance the ethical

and mythical nucleus of mankind . . . we have

the feeling that this single world civilization .

. . exerts a sort of attrition or wearing away

at the experience of the cultural resources

which have made the great civi lizations of

the past . . . the spreading of a mediocre

civilization which is the absurd counterpart

of . . . elementary culture. Everywhere

throughout the world, one finds the same

bad movie, the same slot machines, the

same plastic or aluminum atrocities, the

same twisting of language by propaganda,

etc. It seems as if mankind, by approaching

en masse a basic consumer culture, were

also stopped en masse at a sub cultural

level.’ Frampton, 1983, p. 16 However, the

terms in which such a dualism could be

conceived were being challenged even as

Frampton wrote. The local could not be so

easily located. A gradual shift in the

literature shows the move from concerns

over massive Americanisation (or

‘McDonaldisation’ as Ritzer (2000) puts it)

toward empirical studies of the emergence

of local–global hybrids, partial adoptions and

reworkings of foreign forms in specific

localities (Appadurai, 1996; Pieterse, 1993).

Pieterse (1993), joined by Appadurai (1996)

and Hermans and Kempen (1998), argues

against a reductionist view of globalisation

as Westernisa tion. This analysis is criticised

for its reliance on a dichotomous appreci

ation of intercultural relations (Hermans and

Kempen, 1998). The West is consistently

opposed to ‘the Rest’1. Cultures are

presented in binary oppo sitions, relying on

internal homogeneity and external

distinctiveness. These is no room for

movement, exchange and de-

territorialisation, as observed by the authors

mentioned above. This view can be criticised

for depicting cultures as static, and as

following a clearly demarcated path of

development which has already been

cleared by ‘Western’ civilisation. In addition,

this standpoint completely ignores the fact

that many cultural industries exported from

the West result from contact with non-

Western cultures, and are therefore of

mixed origins themselves (Pieterse, 1993, 1

Edward Said (1978) has called this self-

definition of Europe in particular by

contrasting European identity and nature

against Near and Far Eastern as

‘Orientalism’. Entangled Places, Interface

Buildings, Generic Design 23 p. 8). Thus, this

point of view is limited and dull for two

reasons. First, because it fails to account for

the richness and creativity inherent to global

cultural flows. Second, it does not

accommodate complex questions like the

relationships between the local and the

global, and between time and space

(Cappeliez, 2001, p. 3). The changing role of

the local The opening up of new markets and

the elimination of barriers to trade allow for

new rounds of accumulation. Cultural trends

circulated by global media and

telecommunications leap borders from

metropolis to metropolis regardless of moral

objections of local elites. In the process of

globalisation, it is argued that specific

localities are linked together more closely

than ever before. Local happenings are

shaped by distant events and decisions in a

‘lateral extension of social contexts across

time and space’ (Giddens, 1990, p. 64). It is

not simply that places are linked into larger

and larger networks, but that something of

one place is extended into another. By

forcing agents to make explicit decisions

about which elements of the local economy

and culture will be maintained and what

aspects of global amenities and values will be

adopted, this process implies reflexivity and

‘localisation’ as much as globalisation.

Attempts theoretically to distinguish ‘places’

from the flows between places (Castells,

1996) have foundered in practice despite

being useful models for specific sectors.

(Consider the geography of concrete

production and distribution, which has clear

sites of production and placement and

distances of travel between them.) The local

becomes less a matter of bounded, material

place and close physical proximity

(Appadurai, 1996). In terms of economy and

communication, places them selves are

extended to link up so intimately with other

places that they seem to include other flows

from distant parts. They take on a variable

scale, become ‘over-dimensionally’

extended. They blur into each other as

jurisdictions and scales of regulation and

intervention. The specificity of place as a

node in the global network thus depends on

the practical context for which a local area is

being difined. The size of ‘the local’ is elastic

– the demarcation between local and region,

for example, which varies depending on

whether one is dealing with a transportation

strategy or a bird nesting area. The nature of

social, ecological and economic problems

requires coordi nated responses across

jurisdictions. The obvious examples are

pollution, global warming and risks of fallout

from nuclear accidents such as 24 Buildings,

Culture and Environment Chernobyl.

Environmental problems pay no heed to

natural boundaries, and shifts in, for

example, an ocean current may affect entire

hemispheres. Responses involve the built

environment, including changes in building

method to achieve higher levels of energy

efficiency, overall attention to sustainability

of urban development, and policies directly

affecting the operation and economics of

buildings, such as taxes on fuels for heating

and cooling. Hence the observation that the

global scale of environmen tal, economic and

cultural processes represents a challenge to

which nation states have had to adapt.

Virtually globalised but actually ...? In such

an inclusive form, globalisation becomes

more than an hypothesis. It is a general

rubric, an attempt to name the present,

which emphasises not only homogenising

global forces, but also localising forces and

emergent hybrids (Pieterse, 1993).

Globalisation is abstract, understood as

something neither tangible nor concrete but

which nonetheless has material impacts. It is

a piece of cognitive shorthand, a ‘virtual’

simulation of the complexity of the planet,

approached via an abstract concept (Shields,

2002). The theoretical literature quickly

becomes mired in the abstract, but when it

is applied, it tends to make the virtual into a

self-fulfilling prophecy. The ‘virtual’ is real

but intangible or not ‘actually-so’ including

things such as ‘the spirit’ of the law,

memories and dreams. These are ‘essences’

and can be mistaken for concrete

experiences. Notions of locality are also

warped as they are entangled with the far-

off and absent. And, like the global, when

the local is treated as a totality, as a

miniature world and context of action, it too

is transformed from a concrete milieu into a

virtual category fronted by an abstract

concept – a simulation of the messiness and

complexity of a given context. The

importance of understanding the virtuality

of these concepts – these simulacra – can be

summarised as follows: • First, it pinpoints

why the terms are so useful as simplified,

shorthand expressions for complex

phenomena. • Second, it directs our

attention to the tendency to uncritically actu

alise our conception of ‘globalisation’ in a

naïve manner which often fails in practice. •

Third, it directs attention back to concrete

risks, while allowing actors to take

advantage of specific opportunities.

Entangled Places, Interface Buildings,

Generic Design 25 Bauman has popularized

the term ‘glocalisation’, a play on words

which highlights the importance of the local

as the cradle of all concrete processes.

Globalisation is a ‘wisp of nothingness’; it is

not a place sepa rate from the local

(Bauman, 2000). Rather than a dialectic of

local versus global, the process must be

understood materially. It is a local empirical

change in behaviours such as risk-taking, of

evaluation criteria in deci sion making, of

patterns of circulation and dissemination of

products, and of specific approaches,

designs or processes which take account of

distant conditions, orders, opportunities and

tastes. In effect, globalisation involves a

process of shifting terms of reference.

Through stressful adaptation, and much

public debate, people expand their cognitive

maps of the circle of factors relevant to day-

to-day busi ness. The social ‘spatialisation’ of

the world as a far-flung environment of

relevant and irrelevant places and events

must be revised (Shields, 1991). Narrow

notions of place are redrawn and ‘re-placed’.

The posts demarcat ing the edge of the local

and the beginning of ‘the foreign’ are moved

outward so that geographical areas or

spheres of different localities overlap.

Hybrids If the aspects of local and global, the

near and far in globalised places are blended

and entangled then the local becomes less a

matter of a bounded, limited site, and more

a network or area mapped out on the basis

of rel evance to the purposes at hand. For

example, the fixed quality of locali ties is

challenged by the extended networks of

diasporic communities of immigrants. For

those who travel and those in exile, locality

is no longer necessarily proximate

neighbourhoods but transnational networks

of family, alimentary and discursive

exchange. This ‘glocalisation’ is carried along

by a variety of means: specialty video rental

stores, satellite telecommunications firms,

‘ethnic’ grocers, not to mention the interna

tional scope of the construction and

operation of most urban transporta tion

projects. No longer is the local a sign of

withdrawal from the global but an essential

node concretising a rhizomatic network. In

this, the global is only an abstract concept.

Imported commodities, practices, tastes and

beliefs are never ‘global’ but of some other

place, a context they signal and symbolise

virtually. At the same time they are, even if

only slightly, now materially of ‘this’ place –

the improvised settings, jury-rigged uten sils,

and alien machines which make up the

surroundings in which they are now

practised. 26 Buildings, Culture and

Environment The mapping of the boundaries

of place, locality or context involves the

adjudication of relevance. Although

architecture and planning continue to rely

on administrative districts to establish

regions and property lines to bound sites,

practitioners are aware of the challenges to

these conven tional notions of ‘context’. This

is a matter of the purposes at hand and a

matter of political debate. Thus context and

context-dependency are much more

strongly marked as outcomes: they cease to

be a fixed and tradi tional range of factors

which are merely ‘natural’.2 What climatic

and topographic factors should be given

priority? What eras of history are the most

significant references for a design or for

preservation? Winning project proposals are

built by framing architectural and

engineering solutions within a

problématique, a hierarchical statement of

relative priority of various problems and

issues which a project must negotiate.

Advocates of sustainability have thus found

it difficult to persuade others of the need for

a climatically context-dependent built

environment despite the ‘obviousness’ and

efficient performance of these design

solutions. This is because buildings are also

cultural gestures, solutions to a far wider

range of factors and ‘moves’ in ongoing

cultural games and debates. The parochial

quality of place thus begins to dissolve into

the geographically extended networks which

make up the globalised locality. However,

this may contribute to the erosion of strong,

place-based stand points, identities and

points of view which are an important

reference point when it comes to thinking

critically about globalising trends. It creates

a world of hybrids, of partial adaptations. If

it is difficult to iden tify the qualities of the

‘local’ and hold it up against the ‘foreign’ as

an antidote to a feared globalisation (the

early 1980s approach described above), it is

because the foreign is also transformed into

a ‘naturalised’ or ‘creolised’ element of the

local.3 Ethnographers almost unanimously

see 2 Nor is ‘Nature’ a pure and authentic

referent. It is heavily shaped by human

action such as in the phenomenon of global

warming. As a realm of the pre-social it no

longer exists. Historical studies of the

conduct of scientific research reveal the

constructedness of Euro-American notions

of ‘nature’. This phenomenon and the results

from social studies of science suggest that a

shift toward an unexpected ‘harmony’

between society and nature is taking place in

the approaches and underlying

preconceptions in the development of

advanced technologies and risk

management approaches. The two blur

together into a nature–social singularity, no

longer a dialectic nor a hierarchy but a

complex coupling where everything is in the

details, not in totalities such as ‘nature’ or

‘society’. Ironically, we might have

‘harmony’ between society and nature to

the extent that the two blur together. 3

‘Post-colonial theorists’ (Hall, 1996; Bhabha,

1992; Cavell, 1995; Gilroy, 2001; King, 2000)

have appropriated the Caribbean heritage of

Creole slaves born in the New World (often

with mixed Euro-African parentage) who

created a new, hybrid culture. Fittingly, the

Oxford English Dictionary derives ‘Creole’

from the Spanish criollo ‘native to the

locality’ or country. It is believed to be a

colonial corruption of criadillo (diminutive of

criado, past par Entangled Places, Interface

Buildings, Generic Design 27 culture as in-

contact rather than as islands; not as place-

bound but at the heart of global flows.

Notions of purity and authenticity have been

widely challenged and discarded in

anthropology despite their continued popu

larity in racist rhetoric and structural

functionalism. Nonetheless, people will

continue to speak from the basis of the new

locality, the hybrid will be naturalised,

creolized and celebrated in due course as

indigenous. And each place and each culture

will enshrine and celebrate its own unique

history and path of development.

Architecture and globalisation From the

nineteenth century, architecture has played

a strong role in glob alisation. In the

twentieth century, architects prescribed

standardised models of urban development

and housing, under the auspices of the

Congrès Internationalaux d’Architecture

Moderne (CIAM). European colonies, such as

Algeria, provided architects such as Le

Corbusier with a canvas on which to draw up

plans for Westernised civic life they had not

had the power to impose on European cities

(Rabinow, 1989). At the same time,

architects such as Le Corbusier also adapted

industrialised building materials and

technologies, such as the concrete slab, to

local climatic and cultural conditions. The

emergence of an ‘international style’ based

on standardisation, the technology of the

curtain wall, steel and con crete technologies

and post and slab systems, as well as the

convergence of planning approaches to

cities, suggests that architecture might

figure highly in surveys of one-way

globalisation. However, at the close of the

twentieth century, many architectural theo

rists espoused a distinct disdain from the

functionalist orthodoxies and forms of the

international style, taking more licence to

experiment for mally, on the one hand, and

to engage with a critical regionalism and

local histories, on the other. Rather than

nostalgia, critical regionalism would

‘mediate the impact of universal civilization

with elements derived indi rectly from the

peculiarities of a particular place’ (Frampton,

1983, p. 21). This included intangibles and

virtualities such as ‘the range and quality of

the local light, or in a tectonic derived from a

peculiar structural mode, ticiple of criar, to

breed) ‘bred, brought up, reared,

domesticated’, and from the Latin creare, to

create. According to some eighteenth

century writers, the term Creole was

originally applied by Blacks to their own

children born in the Americas as

distinguished from Blacks freshly imported –

kidnapped – from Africa. The postcolonial

critics’ sense challenges the tendency to

refer to Creole as ‘descendants of European

settlers born and naturalised in those

colonies or regions and more or less

modified in type by the climate and

surroundings’ and thereby erase the

interbreeding with and contribution by

African slaves in the Caribbean. 28 Buildings,

Culture and Environment or in the

topography of a given site’ (Frampton, 1983,

p. 22). However, there is an important caveat

for regional architecture: it ‘cannot be simply

based on the autochthonous forms of a

specific region alone . . . [It] has to

“deconstruct” the overall spectrum of world

culture which it inevitably inherits [and] . . .

it has to achieve, through synthetic

contradiction, a manifest critique of

universal civilization.’ Frampton, 1983, p. 22

The problem is that the ‘autochthonous’, the

authentic and natural is not such a simple

matter. Rather it is derived from often

forgotten historical exchanges. Who would

today understand that the North American

sub urban bungalow is indebted not only to

the long horizontal lines of Frank Lloyd

Wright’s ‘Prairie Houses’ (and to North

American wood stud and brick veneer

construction techniques), but also to the

teak house forms of South East Asia and the

South Asian bungalow (King, 1984)? Over the

long run, cultures and localities participate in

systems of exchange with other localities.

The end result of Frampton’s critical

regionalism is precisely a range of hybrids,

although admittedly not all critical ones.

However, all of these hybrids might be

characterised as facing both the global (or

‘universal’) and the local. Such a liminal or

threshold quality betwixt and between the

two scales is not a long-term status.

Eventually, these hybrids become

naturalised (creolised, if you will). They are

understood as part of a con tinuum of the

local itself. This is essential if ‘the local’ is not

to be reified as an unchanging nostalgic

identity, an untouchable ‘autochthonous’

form. Despite decades of the International

Style, Western capitalist prop erty regimes

and the dominance of the automobile, and

standard mass transportation technologies,

the greatest similarity of major global cities

is found in the predominance of the high-rise

office building. Cities nonetheless retain

unique characteristics which distinguish

them. These distinctions are socio-cultural as

much as they are climatic or environ mental.

Despite the important call for heightening

our critical awareness, critical regionalists in

architecture neglect the social. Frampton

(for example) overshoots the social. He

counts too much on an even more

ideological, culturally unstable and difficult

to reproduce metaphysics of place requiring

concrete boundaries that isolate one locality

from another to create ‘a domain for an

architecture of resistance and a basis of real

community’ (cf. Heidegger, 1968; Frampton,

1983, p. 25). As a result, a generation of

architectural writers were sidelined in

debates over Entangled Places, Interface

Buildings, Generic Design 29 globalisation

and the geopolitics of built environments.

These writers do not figure in the literature.4

Globalised buildings Where traditions and

forms do not accommodate new uses and

activities, new forms are created or adopted.

Thus it is that specific built forms char

acterise the emergence of new circuits of

global mobility, transportation and

communications. These facilities service the

very processes of glob alisation which have

been so heavily critiqued, including

transportation and travel,

telecommunications, tourism and

international spectacle. Other such facilities

are types of infrastructure which support

contempo rary standards of health, density

and service delivery such as roads, urban

mass transit systems, sewer and electrical

systems, not to mention telecommunication

cables. The relevance of these facilities to

the ques tion of sustainable architecture is

that they often include the most envi

ronmentally damaging projects and those

that draw upon international expertise in

terms of design services, engineering

technologies, materials and project

management. Angé (1995) has commented

that many of these projects amount to ‘non

place spaces’: total environments

dominated by a devotion to mobility and

movement, to the exclusion of any sense of

fixity, place or local identity. While he

originally wrote about the Paris Metro, such

spaces are even more strongly exemplified

by airports and aircraft interiors, shopping

malls, suburban and ‘edge-city’ box-stores,

sports stadia, hotels, vacation condominia

and spas, and even urban loft

accommodation which has achieved a

remarkable level of stereotype for both its

re-use of industrial/commercial real estate

and the image of its tenants. The range of

scales runs from the pocket- and kiosk-sized

environments through automated banking

machines to warehousing complexes. These

buildings and engineering projects are

ahistorical and unconcerned with identity.

Hence they provoke a crisis in

understandings of the spatialisa tion of

buildings, of the ‘fit’ between function and

location, of built project and site. 4

Nonetheless buildings and redevelopment

projects figure highly as examples of

globalisa tion and contemporary cultural

change used by cultural theorists who

provided the critical understanding which

architects and theorists of the built

environment were unable to provide. See,

for example, Jameson’s discussion of the

Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, or Soja’s

discussion of Los Angeles (Jameson, 1984;

Soja, 2000). 30 Buildings, Culture and

Environment Buchanan (1999) argues that

globalised building forms offer a kind of

anonymous space that cannot be owned,

that cannot be invested in emotionally, but

which is nevertheless able to make one feel

modern, important, and even at home:

‘Frequentation of non-places today provides

an experience – without real historical

precedent – of solitary individuality

combined with non human mediation (all it

takes is a notice or a screen) . . . between the

individual and the public authority.’

Buchanan, 1999, p. 396 Communication

devices stand in for human contact. For

critics, where ‘the local’ is present in

globalised built environments, it is often in

the frozen form of historical arts and

traditions or as ‘staged authenticity’

carefully organised to give tourists an

impression of colour ful ritual without the

inconvenience of leaving the artificial and

con trolled environment of the building.

Local inhabitants are often delighted with

the construction of globalised facilities not

only as a mark of moder nity but also as signs

of the organisation and control of intrusive

tourists and as a tangible improvement in

communications, in leisure facilities and in

public spaces. Nonetheless, local inhabitants

are more often than not excluded on the

basis of class, caste and consumer lifestyles

while bearing the impact of these facilities

on the local environment and on the

availability of scarce land, services, and

resources. Branded spaces Such

environments are often branded spaces.

Restaurant franchises, airport terminals and

sports stadia all involve copyrighted designs.

They are governed by explicitly extra-

architectural and non-local rules of play or

economic interaction, of security or of forms

of sorting and processing. They are serially

produced commodities. Although there are

differences between, say, ‘Australian rules’

and Canadian football, at the heart of

football stadiums the world over are similar

sized and recognisable pitches, baseball

diamonds and rinks. Yet the interaction

between systems for regulating information

and knowledge such as copyright and patent

is rarely considered in relation to local

environmental knowledge, globalised

environmental standards (e.g. lighting levels)

and politicised environ mental struggles. We

need to study more fully the interaction

between systems and scales of information

and knowledge which inform major projects.

Entangled Places, Interface Buildings,

Generic Design 31 Fig. 3.1 Beams supporting

the roof at the Ulsan World Cup Stadium

(Photo: Kevin West) A simple example is the

stadium built for the 2002 World Cup soccer

championship in Ulsan, South Korea. World

Cup soccer is a brand, and teams are

franchises which sell their names as brands

for endorsing other sports products. The

stadium roof is carried on Japanese-designed

Kevlar reinforced beams (Fig. 3.1) and built

by a consortium of a local contractor and a

Korean global conglomerate, yet rubble infill

and concrete is placed by hand. Slipper-clad

workers with little safety protection carry

cement and stone and are paid on an

informal, daily basis (Fig. 3.2). Is this a ‘high

tech’ building or not? If soccer is globalised,

is it any less significant to local cultures the

world over? The reaction of Western

construction and project management

researchers to such projects is that they have

little to learn from, for example,

construction in Korea. But what firms and

researchers stand to learn is precisely how

globally sourced products and practices are

integrated with local traditions and

conditions (Shields and West, 2000).

Buildings as interfaces Like a sports stadium

which will host a global game, welcome inter

national teams and originate global

television signals, many globalised built

environments are interfaces from the local

to the ‘global society’. Globalised built

environments display distanciated

elsewhereness and cosmopolitanism of a

social world beyond any fixed locality (Urry,

2000). These buildings relate different

places, they are in-between, conduits, 32

Buildings, Culture and Environment Fig. 3.2

Ulsan Stadium: manual placement of

concrete and rubble infill liminal zones

(Buchanan, 1999) which are designed to

keep the local dis tinct from the global. Like

previous forms of quarantine, globalised

build ings are architectural and engineering

strategies in the management of f lows

between scales. Branded spaces and other

copyrighted intangibles are virtual aspects of

built environments. In the case of ‘globalised

build ings’, the virtual and the concrete are

often fused together. Whether it is a matter

of franchised chain stores, outlets for

specific brands or a copy righted retractable

roof design, these projects can be

understood as hybrids not only bridging

scales but actualising the virtual (as in

environments which attempt to express a

brand identity) and virtualising the actual

(turning the material form of a project into a

sign signifying, for example, a brand or a

place). Again this might be described as a

form of liminality (described above), or

transition, bifurcation. Thus these are not

only envi ronmentally significant but social

symbolic ‘crossroads’ projects which are

essential symbols of the direction that

construction is headed in toward or away

from sustainability. Generic design and

infrastructure Are these projects not an

imposition of repetitive and manipulative

envi ronments – such as the pink and grey

decor of chain restaurants tested to

maximise familiarity and sales? Critical

Regionalists limited their con cerns to the

expressive dimensions of individual

architectural com missions. The generic and

globalised does have its place: ‘We have

been taught to welcome the inhuman, to

feel at home in its known estrangement. And

as every overseas traveler knows, the famil

Entangled Places, Interface Buildings,

Generic Design 33 iarity of even so soul-less

a generic space as an airport can be very com

forting. Even though you may be in China

and cannot speak or read Chinese, you can

still negotiate your way around an

apparently intri cate and dense space like

Shanghai’s extremely busy international

airport because its primary features are the

same as every other airport you’ve been to .

. . no matter how unfamiliar a place may be,

if you simply follow an already all too familiar

itinerary you will get through . . .’ Buchanan,

1999, pp. 396–7 But the concept of hybridity

pertains to infrastructure as well as build

ings. Attempts to fit imported infrastructural

systems (such as water purification or

sewage treatment) into localities without

the required support (availability of

electricity, chemicals, not to mention

expertise) and inputs have failed. Generic

design is not only a matter of predictability

but also a ‘portal’ to globalised and

standardised components and systems. In

addition, it is a way of meshing with mobile

environments such as air craft or container

ships. Generic design (and the environments

con structed from generic elements) is a

form of ‘switch’ between different velocities

of mobility, communication modes,

networks and types of com modities. A

continuum of branded, generic spaces can

be identified which interface velocities of

movement and transmission from the

desktop oper ating systems of computers

(which relate the electronic speed of the

virtual to the sedentary) through to

container ports and airport terminals (which

translate the Mach speeds of air routes to

the automobilised or light rail speeds of

ground transportation). Conclusion

Globalisation has come to be seen as a

vehicle spawning the creation of hybrids, a

shifting mass of reconfigurations, not as a

wave of cultural imperialism (cf. Cappeliez,

2001, p. 6). In architectural terms, however,

globalisation signals globalised generic and

branded environments, which have been

characterised as ‘non-place spaces’

populated by stereotyped and unreflexive

conceptions of the users who frequent these

facilities. Yet as a type of standardised

infrastructure, generic design forms a portal

for f lows between localities, and offers the

potential to deploy innovations from one

place in another location or jurisdiction.

Local identities are framed within a global

context. The ‘local’ comes to be either what

should be properly called a ‘local hybrid’ (for

example, a building in a historical local style

retrofitted with double-glazing for energy

efficiency), or a 34 Buildings, Culture and

Environment preserved and ‘heritagised’

building, neighbourhood or culture which is

often commodified for tourist consumption.

I have contrasted the virtual with the

concrete in order to argue that glob alised

products and processes are only abstractly

so. In reality, they are virtually foreign but

taken up and integrated – naturalised – so

that they can be concretely integrated into

the material surroundings of a different

locality. They lose their liminal status

between here and elsewhere in a manner

similar to the example of Creole cultures. A

class of so-called ‘globalised buildings’

persists because they function as interfaces

in flows between localities. For example,

airport runways and baggage handling are

standardised. Branded spaces offer the most

non-local of any environ ments, proffering

generic experiences which nonetheless

remain associ ated with particular cultures

and places – restaurant chains such as Planet

Hollywood and sports stadia need to be

understood as part of the flows between

places. While globalisation presents

challenges to cultural understandings of the

world as a space of distance and difference,

people will continue to appropriate, creolise

and celebrate local hybrids. They will

demand opportunities to participate in flows

of cultural and economic resources from and

to other places, diverting and applying them

to meet their own ambitions. No culture is an

island. Both anti-globalisation protesters and

national political debates have taken up

these questions. There is no doubt that the

most ‘global’ quality of globalisation is the

widespread concern amongst populations

and a search for knowledge and

understanding. As often as not, national

resources and efforts have been put into

resisting a global homogenisation. However,

although rhetoric champions the local, the

results appear often to be hybrids, as I have

argued above. More research is therefore

needed on the interaction between scales of

knowledge and of action. Manufacturers

need to understand the local con texts in

which their products are taken up and the

hybrids in which they must function rather

than assuming standardised conditions.

Regulators need to understand the

implications of unregulated imports, and the

impacts that exports will have in new

settings. Managers and designers need to

understand the implications that local

cultural, biotic and eco nomic jurisdictions

have for the use and deployment of practices

and prod ucts and the actualisation of

virtual, intangible products and assets in

concrete projects. Above all, we need to see

globalisation as something broader than a

process of Westernisation. Entangled Places,

Interface Buildings, Generic Design 35

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Trading Places – Sharing Knowledge about

Environmental Building Techniques David M.

Gann The motivation for this chapter stems

from the need to share knowledge about

environmental building techniques between

professionals from dif ferent cultures and

across disciplines. This need has become a

priority because of growing pressures to

design buildings that perform in a sus

tainable manner and that are sensitive to the

local context within which they are used. The

chapter explores two dimensions of

knowledge exchange: the regional

dimension – how professionals from

different cul tures learn from one another;

and the communities of practice dimension–

how knowledge can be shared between

professionals from different dis ciplines. It

presents concepts that contribute to a

framework for under standing knowledge

exchange at a national, sectoral and firm

level. The chapter explores how these might

be used to analyse knowledge exchange in

project-based environments. It concludes

with the suggestion that built environment

professionals should be well placed to

exchange knowledge because they often

work in teams in which they need to share

technical knowledge in order to integrate

systems. However, there are many structural

impediments to realising this because of the

nature of the organisational processes found

in many construction projects and a weak

understanding of whole-life value. This may

well present significant barriers to exchange

in situations of cross-cultural and

interdisciplinary practice. Introduction

Concerns about global climate change, its

causes and effects, are increas ing (Hadley

Centre, 2002; Hulme et al., 2002; IPCC, 2002;

Tyndall, 2002; 38 Buildings, Culture and

Environment UKCIP, 2002). As a result, there

are growing pressures on professionals to

design buildings that have a lower impact on

the environment and that can withstand the

possible longer term consequences of

changing weather patterns. The production

and use of buildings and structures has

historically been a local affair. Location and

place have defined the nature of the product

and its use. Building techniques have

evolved through local know-how, the use of

local materials and craft labour.

Specialisation increased as markets

expanded for particular knowledge about

building techniques. Modern construction

practices developed with codification of this

knowl edge, and the sector became highly

regulated, with most regulations based upon

governing regional practices – often

interpreted in different ways at a local level.

An international construction system

emerged, involving trade in design,

engineering and project management

services and in materials and components

(Drewer, 1990; Linder, 1994). This system

overlaps, and works in tandem with regional

and local craft practices (Gann, 2000). It is

therefore not surprising that a variety of

environmen tal techniques and approaches

to sustainability have emerged in different

locations, whilst there is also a growing

interest in exploring how lessons from one

region can be understood, contextualised

and acted upon in another. Human and

physical geography is important for those

involved in design ing, making and managing

buildings, in terms of settlement patterns,

culture, climate and geology. But while place

and context remain impor tant, a number of

factors are creating new requirements for

international exchange of knowledge about

how and what we build. These factors

include the following: • Globalisation of

markets and production – particularly across

OECD countries and in rapidly developing

regions, such as China. • Development and

exploitation of technical opportunities – for

example through the diffusion of

information and communication

technologies, increased access to

international research and the emergence of

new technologies (biotechnology for smart,

green buildings, nanotech nology, etc.). •

Demographic, social and economic changes

– including new mi gration patterns, an

ageing population in OECD countries,

competi tion for scarce resources, and issues

of development in the poorest regions.

Sharing Knowledge about Environmental

Building Techniques 39 • Global

environmental change – and the emergence

of pan-national reg ulations and protocols

for dealing with its impact and mitigation.

These forces for change are challenging

traditional approaches to design and

construction based on craft and precedent,

and there is evidence that the validity and

use of technical precedent is in decline

(Groák, 1992). Groák argues that over the

years, tried and tested building methods,

which gave rise to a repertory of ‘robust

technologies’, are now being pushed to the

limits and beyond. They have become

sensitive to errors of design, manufacture,

assembly and use. The reason he gives is a

breakdown in traditional feedback

mechanisms. This relates closely to changes

in training processes and difficulties in

sharing knowledge because of the ways in

which work processes are organised. The

forces identified above are likely to increase

the rate of change with a loss of robustness.

In order to respond to these factors, design

organisations, construction f irms and

research institutions need to develop better

approaches to the exchange of information

and knowledge across cultures and

regions.Issues concerning the environmental

impact and performance of buildings have

their own specific requirements, because

this area is likely to be subject to increasing

international, regional and local regulation in

future. This chapter contends that improving

the cross-cultural exchange of knowledge is

no easy matter. It makes recommendations

for systematic research on some of the

impediments and concludes with a defence

of variety and pluralistic outcomes. The

chapter is organised in five sections. The first

sets out the terms of reference, scope and

definitions. The second focuses on exchange

of knowledge in project-based

environments. Section three presents a case

study of engineering design in which

different cross cultural sources of knowledge

were used to resolve unexpected problems.

This is followed by a discussion of general

concepts of knowledge man agement and

exchange, citing ideas from the innovation

literature. The chapter concludes with a

summary of the main argument and key

factors concerning cross-cultural knowledge

exchange. Terms of reference and

definitions Two matters need to be clarified

before exploring the exchange of knowl edge

in relation to environmental building

information: first, the differ ence between

the concepts of knowledge and information;

and second, the definition of sustainability

and the environment. In addition, the term

40 Buildings, Culture and Environment

exchange is preferred to that of transfer

because it implies the possibility of mutual

learning processes rather than a one-way

flow. Knowledge and information A central

question in this book is the appropriate

transfer and application of information. It is

necessary to distinguish between the

transfer of information and exchange of

knowledge. The terms are not simply

interchangeable. For example, knowledge

entails capabilities such as judgement,

interpretation and understanding. It involves

categorisation, synthesis and evaluation in

order to make decisions about actions.

Knowledge, therefore, brings with it the

capacity to act and react within particular

parameters. It involves the use of

information for par ticular purposes. There

are obviously links between these concepts

and the development and use of information

and communication technolo gies (ICT) to

support information and knowledge

processes. However, issues concerning the

use of technologies in this way are beyond

the scope of this chapter. Whilst the

capabilities of today’s information systems

are astonishing for searching, retrieving,

switching, distributing and storing data, they

cannot provide the deeper levels of

understand ing needed to act. Even with the

most sophisticated processing capabili ties,

warehouses of information cannot

guarantee that the users of that information

can deploy and analyse it effectively and

employ it for specific reasons. Knowledge is

typically accumulated through education

and experience. There are management

routines and techniques that can help to

share what people know – knowledge

management has become a fashionable

buzzword. There is a burgeoning literature

on this, dealing with issues at the level of the

firm, across disciplines and sectors (e.g.

Leonard-Barton, 1995; Nonaka and

Takeuchi, 1995; Fruin, 1997; Pfeffer and

Sutton, 1999; Nonaka and Teece, 2001).

Knowledge is context specific. A

distinguishing feature is whether it can be

communicated and written down – explicit

knowledge – or whether it is difficult to pass

on to others. This second type, tacit

knowledge, is often the most crucial,

because it is acquired through practice and it

can form a distinctive advantage for

individuals and organisations, leading to

variety of approach and outcome. This

‘sticky’ tacit knowledge cannot easily be

picked up and imitated by rivals. Neither can

it be easily trans ferred or exchanged. By

contrast, documented knowledge can more

often be assimilated, distributed, copied and

used. To be transferred, tacit Sharing

Knowledge about Environmental Building

Techniques 41 knowledge requires person-

to-person contact and individual learning

and experience. It is not just a matter of

‘copy and paste’. Another important aspect

of the concept of knowledge is that it needs

a knower. While some forms of knowledge

can be made explicit and stored, it is how it

is applied in practice that often matters.

Knowing how to do something is subtly

different to having the knowledge available

some where. Knowledge that is not used can

become outdated. Knowledge is, therefore,

often most useful in the context of actions:

practices, processes, routines and initiatives.

In commercial environments, too much

attention is often paid to the passive storage,

possession and protection of knowl edge,

when the best protection is often the barrier

of learning needed to acquire it.

Sustainability and the environment The

second set of terms that require definition

are sustainability and the environment. A

review of the literature in this area shows

that there are many different ways of

defining these terms, particularly in the

context of development. This was already

apparent as long ago as 1989 (cf. the ‘gallery

of definitions’ of sustainable development

put forward by Pearce, et al., 1989). The

concepts are heavily contested by academics

working in environmental policy, political

science, economics, international relations

and development studies. Six core themes

emerge from the literature: environment–

economy integration; futurity;

environmental protection; equity; quality of

life; and participation (Jacobs, 1999). The

sustainability label therefore applies in

different ways to both the natural and social

worlds, depending upon the context and

questions addressed. Whilst definitions are

not universally shared, Jacobs’s six core

themes provide a useful set of over-arching

terms of reference. National govern ments,

firms, and non-governmental organisations

have developed their own definitions around

these as they seek to put environmental and

sus tainability policies into practice. The fact

that approaches differ proves the point

about regional difference and the challenge

of cross-cultural knowledge exchange. One

important area of debate focuses on

technology and its role in devel opment and

underdevelopment. Technology can be

defined as ‘know how’, including human

skills, capabilities and interface with

hardware. It can be transferred as such,

raising questions about technology transfer

and appropriateness (Stewart, 1977).

Moreover, rapid advances in generic tech

nologies have been shown to be central to

transformations in local and 42 Buildings,

Culture and Environment global markets

(Freeman and Soete, 1997). The most

important current example of this is the way

in which ICT is affecting patterns of economic

growth and social change in OECD countries,

transitional economies and developing

countries. Research shows great differences

in the potential benefits and risks to

societies, organisations and individuals,

associated with the development and

adoption of these technologies (Mansell and

Wehn, 1998). This sometimes causes and

often exacerbates uneven devel opment

and, in consequence, has become a major

focal point for policy makers in organisations

such as the United Nations. These examples

illustrate some of the potential problems

and pitfalls in examining the issue of cross-

cultural knowledge transfer, where sustain

able development and the environment are

concerned. As with most defi nitions, the

reference point depends upon what problem

is being tackled, why it is being addressed,

who thinks it is important, and how it might

be resolved. Exchanging knowledge in

project-based environments The design,

engineering, construction and

refurbishment of buildings usually takes

place in a project-based environment. The

structure and use of knowledge in projects

has particular qualities that make knowledge

exchange different from that found in other

modes of production. There are two main

issues: first, in terms of the nature of

knowledge used and developed in project-

based activities; and second, the flow of

knowledge between project teams and

project-based firms (Gann and Salter, 1998;

Gann and Salter, 2000; Salter and Gann,

2003). Construction projects usually involve

a particular approach to technical

development and problem solving, in which

participants are often involved in integrating

and optimising systems made from many

compo nent parts. To do this, they use

information from many different dis ciplines

and sectors, searching for solutions that

represent the best fit within particular

constraints of cost, time and quality.

Designers, engi neers and project managers

usually carry out these searches on the job

through project processes. Groák and

Krimgold (1989) referred to this com bined

role of action and research as that of the

practitioner-researcher. Integrating

environmental building systems requires

people to work in networks with other

professionals, cutting across different

disciplines and communities of practice.

Thus, project team working can promote the

exchange of knowledge. Figure 4.1 illustrates

some of the core networks and allegiances

held by a project team member. It shows

that the com Sharing Knowledge about

Environmental Building Techniques 43

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE DEPARTMENT

TEAM COMPANY Fig. 4.1 Knowledge

exchange in project-based environments

(Source: Sapsed et al., 2003) munities of

practice may represent stronger linkages for

sharing and exchanging knowledge than

internal departmental or company-wide

networks. Managing and exchanging

knowledge is particularly difficult in project

based firms that are typical in industries like

construction. There is a problem in project-

to-project (P2P) knowledge transfer, as well

as project to-business (P2B) transfer.1 P2P

problems are caused by the discontinuities

between projects and the teams that work

on them. Any new knowledge that is created

through the course of construction on a

specific site or designing a specific building

may be simply lost or forgotten when the

contract is completed and the team

dispersed. There is rarely the time or space

to ensure that the lessons of a project are

genuinely learned by the organisation at

large. Scheduling and business pressures

often dictate that people are immediately

redeployed on fresh projects and are quickly

engrossed in new problems. The different

flows of knowledge in a project based

environment are shown in Table 4.1. The P2B

problem involves the distance between the

projects and the central organisation of the

firm. This distance may not be solely geo

graphic. It may also be to do with culture and

identity. Ad hoc organisa tions that are put

together for projects have a different

purpose and atmosphere to the firm’s

central headquarters and services. A typical

1 The terms P2P and P2B emanate from work

on the nature of project-based firms by Gann

and Salter, and were coined by Salter and

Sapsed during work on a construction

knowledge management research

assignment. 44 Buildings, Culture and

Environment Table 4.1 Knowledge exchange

in a project-based environment • Project-to-

Project (P2B) passing experience and ideas

from one project to another • Project-to-

Business (P2P) movement of experience

from project teams to the central business

function • Business-to-Project (B2P)

dissemination and development of new skills

and competencies in central departments to

project teams Source: Sapsed et al. (2003)

effect of project-based organisations may be

a stronger affinity with other project

partners than with the project team’s own

business. Communities of practice may arise

in the project, despite cross-functional or

even cross business differences. It is often

the case that, in the world of projects,

teamworking within and between projects

and departments is not easily achieved. The

traditional idea of teambuilding through

cohesiveness and ‘team spirit’ is insufficient

to deal with the differences in what people

know. While there are cer tainly benefits of

cross-functional diversity, attention is

required to cope with the lack of

understanding between people from

different functions or business areas. Such

diverse teams need to create and establish

‘bound ary spanning objects’ that recognise

the distinctions, but achieve agree ment that

is intercommunal. Examples of such tools

can be project architectures or work

breakdown structures. The key task is

managing interfaces between people in

different communities efficiently, rather

than trying to impose uniformity. Such

analysis leads down several avenues that

require further exploration in understanding

cross-cultural knowledge exchange. These

relate to knowledge and boundaries of the f

irm (Brusoni et al., 2001), and problems in

the development of organisa tional memory

in project-based firms.2 Analysis of

knowledge exchange There are several

general concepts that together provide a

framework for understanding knowledge

exchange and technology transfer. On the

regional dimension, these include national

systems of innovation and net works of

innovators; on the communities of practice

dimension, they 2 The issues of

organisational memory emanate from work

done by E. Cacciatori in her Doctoral thesis at

SPRU, University of Sussex. Sharing

Knowledge about Environmental Building

Techniques 45 include absorptive capacity.

These concepts (discussed below) are drawn

from the innovation literature and can be

applied to the question of cross cultural

exchange. The built environment forms a

platform for particular culturally deter

mined activities. Its social meaning and

relevance are multi-layered because of the

different functions that buildings enable and

support. It therefore has a particular

symbolic quality that depends to some

extent on place and region. The cultural

dimension relates to the type of economy

and varieties of social and institutional

structures, for example, found in different

forms of capitalism (Trompenaars and

Hampden-Turner, 1997; Hall and Soskice,

2001). National systems of innovation

Descriptive and analytical work on national

systems of innovation provides a useful

reference point because it relates issues of

learning and knowledge creation with

technical and economic development in the

context of particular socio-cultural and

governance structures (Lundvall, 1992; Patel

and Pavitt, 1994; Freeman, 1995). The

concept pro vides a framework for discussing

some of the reasons why different countries

and regions are able to develop at varying

rates, or tackle prob lems in different ways.

For example, the structure of national and

regional institutional arrangements makes a

difference in how organisations develop,

become aware of, adopt or act upon new

ideas. Such institutional arrangements might

include the education system, the role of

develop ment agencies, or government

support for R&D, as well as for regulatory

processes. Networks of innovators and

communities of practice The concept of

networks of innovators refers to how

intellectual com munities are connected

through social and information networks (De

Bresson and Walker, 1991; Freeman, 1991;

Bessant, 1995). It explains the ways in which

communities emerge, coalesce and develop,

focusing on specific areas of knowledge,

research themes and problems to exploit

opportunities to innovate. This may involve

relationships between suppliers and users,

or research institutes and businesses. The

concept of communities of practice is slightly

different from the network systems

approach. It is helpful in describing ways in

which 46 Buildings, Culture and Environment

knowledge flows within and between

different networks and groups of

practitioners (Wenger, 1998; Brown and

Duguid, 2000; Wenger and Snyder, 2000).

This can shed light on particular aspects of

cross-cultural knowl edge transfer, whether

within a single organisation which has

different operating divisions and areas, or

between groups of players working across

national boundaries. Practitioners often ask

why it is that there are areas of good practice

in their organisations, yet they cannot seem

to diffuse this throughout other

departments. The answer is often that the

nature of knowledge is tacit, and therefore

not easily transferred to those who do not

share the same understanding. In recent

years, the term communities of practice has

been used to describe groups of people who

share much of the same understanding of

knowing how to achieve particular goals.

These communities can arise from the

shared experience of working on a project, a

particular line of business, within disciplines,

or in tackling particular problems. The

worlds of academe and of professional

practice (such as law, account ancy,

medicine or architecture) provide many

examples of how disci plines operate as

communities of practice (Becher, 1989,

1999). They also demonstrate the difficulties

of transferring knowledge between

professions. Communities of practice can

spread across a sector as like-minded prac

titioners meet and exchange experience

through associations, institutions,

conferences, newsletters, and online

message boards and websites. This may

occur through informal networks which

bypass formal structures within and

between organisations (Cross and Prusak,

2002). Some of these can be based on

technical or functional disciplines, which

reflects the shared education and training

that those people have in common. If an

organisation is structured on functions and

disciplines, there is sometimes an effect that

best practice is transferred more easily

outside of the company than into its own

departments. This is because knowledge is

more difficult to transfer across different

functional communities of prac tice, hence

‘sticky’ knowledge, whereas it can transfer

more easily within communities, which may

mean knowledge ‘leaking’ outside the firm

or institution. Nevertheless, the nature of

knowledge within a community of practice

can and should be a contested issue. It is

possible for two built environ ment

professionals from the same discipline to

articulate completely dif ferent professional

judgements about the sustainability of, for

example, the redevelopment of an inner-city

housing scheme. People within similar

Sharing Knowledge about Environmental

Building Techniques 47 communities can

also disagree because they have different

perspectives, values and interests. Such

differences may be greater when issues are

dealt with by professionals working across

national cultures. In some cases this may

exacerbate decision making processes; in

others, it may introduce new ideas that offer

innovative ways of solving problems.

Research and absorptive capacity The third

set of concepts help to articulate the role of

research and related activities of design,

engineering and technical support, within

organisa tions, in terms of their capacity to

learn. Cohen and Levinthal argue that R&D

has two faces: one side is the development

of new ideas for innovation and problem

solving; the other is the capability that allows

organisations to absorb ideas from

elsewhere – absorptive capac ity (Cohen and

Levinthal, 1990). Investment in research can,

therefore, be beneficial, even if it does not

result in directly exploitable outcomes,

because it also maintains and builds

capabilities that allow an organisa tion to

engage in debates and adopt new ideas. This

point seems particu larly important in

coming to terms with the perceived need to

transfer knowledge about environmental

building methods – those organisations that

invest in research on the subject are more

likely to be able to under stand and use

lessons from other cultural contexts. There

are debates in industrial economics as to

whether firms should carry out their own

research or subcontract out to third-party

providers. For example, a transaction costs

approach sometimes suggests that it is more

cost efficient to buy in research services,

rather than set up inter nal systems.

Mowery’s pioneering work on intra-firm

location of research functions in American

manufacturing firms in the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries shows that in-

house and independent research

laboratories complemented each other

(Mowery, 1983). More recent studies in the

pharmaceutical sector show that there is

often no substi tute for R&D that is carried

out internally, because the process of par

ticipating in research helps to build the

knowledge about what R&D to do in the

future (Gambardella, 1992). This principle

can be applied to many types of research and

knowledge exchange, particularly where the

level of technical content is high. In the

context of knowledge about envi ronmental

building methods, it implies that firms which

carry out their own research are more likely

to have the capabilities to define new issues

to explore and exploit. 48 Buildings, Culture

and Environment Discussion The framework

presented in the previous section provides a

means to assess the possibilities and limits to

cross-cultural knowledge exchange between

built environment professionals. The

example of design of the London Millennium

Bridge (Fig. 4.2) illus trates how these

concepts might be used to understand issues

in the cross cultural transfer of knowledge.

This was to be the first footbridge across the

river Thames to be built for more than 100

years, linking the Tate Gallery and St Paul’s

Cathedral. Whilst the project was not

explicitly about the practice of

environmental building techniques, it

embodied some of the principles of

sustainable development – it is a car-free

bridge, creating little pollution in use, and its

slim design implies reduced em bodied

energy and pollution. The bridge design was

awarded through a competition aimed at

produc ing an innovative, modern approach.

The winning team involved collab oration

between Arup engineers, Foster and

Partners architects and the sculptor, Sir

Anthony Caro – the team spanned at least

three different communities of practice.

Working together, they created a minimal

design to give pedestrians a view of London,

free of traffic and high above the river. The

bridge spans 325 metres and is an

innovative, complex struc ture, only 4 metres

wide, with an aluminium deck flanked by

stainless steel balustrades, supported by

cables to each side so as to not infringe Fig.

4.2 Millennium Bridge, London (Photo: Arup

/ Thomas Graham) Sharing Knowledge about

Environmental Building Techniques 49 upon

important, protected views within the city.

The bridge span to depth ratio is 63:1,

around 6 times shallower than a

conventional suspension bridge. The design

team used modern design technologies in

order to achieve this. They drew upon

lessons from the design of other bridges

from around the world, and they built

sophisticated computer simulations to test

the design. The result was heralded as a

beautiful architectural/engineering and

sculp tural contribution to London. The

bridge opened on 10 June 2000, when

between 80000 and 100000 people walked

across it. However, when large groups of

people were crossing, greater than expected

sideways movements occurred. A decision

was taken to close the bridge only two days

after its opening in order to investigate the

problem fully and take remedial action. This

led to embarrassment for the design team

and incurred costs for their company. Their

reputations were at stake and they were

castigated in the press and media for not

checking for the ‘footfall amplification

problem’, which occurs when groups of

people walk across bridges. But the

engineers had tested for these potential

problems and were puzzled as to why the

bridge had moved. Arup communicated the

problem to their worldwide network of

design offices, using the Internet. A cross-

cultural search was undertaken for a

diagnosis and solution to rectify the prob

lems. Arup needed the flexibility to find an

answer as quickly as possible, with the focus

and expertise to test, measure and analyse

the problem. Three research units were set

up and worked together simultaneously. The

first was brought to London from offices

around the world and was instructed to test

the bridge and discover where the problems

lay with the original computer model (they

found no problems with the model). The

second group was selected from external

organisations judged to have the best

expertise to assist in diagnosis and problem

solving in bridge design. The external team

played an important part in finding the

solution, working in tandem with the Arup

teams. University research groups from

Cambridge, Sheffield, Imperial College and

Southampton were commis sioned to run

tests on crowd behaviour patterns on

bridges. The third team worked on the

design of new dampers to be installed to

absorb shock and reduce lateral movement.

Young engineers were encouraged to think

lat erally about the problem, and the team

came up with a potential solution two

months after their exploration began. During

this process, Arup’s Japanese office found a

paper which described qualitatively the

phenomenon that occurred on the bridge.

The paper had 50 Buildings, Culture and

Environment been published in a seismic

engineering journal not widely read by prac

tising bridge engineers, published in

Japanese on the ‘lateral excitation of

bridges’. The paper showed the

mathematical principles concerning the

emergent properties exhibited by the bridge.

Other searches found similar problems on

bridges of a very different structure such as

a heavy road bridge in Auckland, New

Zealand, which moved in exactly the same

way when crossed by a large crowd in 1975.

One of the main lessons from the experience

was that the existing en gineering knowledge

from Japan had not been accessed by the

original UK design team. Recognising the

need to inform the bridge engineering

profession of this previously unquantified

phenomenon, Arup set up a website to

communicate the results of their

investigation, placing their f indings in the

public domain for others to use. This case

illustrates the important process of learning

by failure (‘to engi neer is to be human’

(Petroski, 1985)) and how a construction

consultancy can benefit by developing an

innovative response through exchanging

knowledge between different communities

of practice. It also illustrates how the

organisation’s dynamic capability (discussed

more fully in the conclusions) is used and

maintained. Future analysis of knowledge

exchange might begin with an understand

ing of the backgrounds, histories and

approaches to professional develop ment

found in different countries. Research to

analyse national systems of development

through education and professional practice

would indi cate similarities and gaps in

knowledge. The form of professional educa

tion and the extent to which it leads to

specialised or interdisciplinary thinking has

important consequences in the

development of capabilities to communicate

and share knowledge (Gann and Salter,

1999). In many countries, knowledge

exchange is moderated by the presence of

institu tional frameworks in the form of

learned societies and professional asso

ciations, which assist communication within

and between different communities of

practice. At another level, analysis of

particular design and engineering practices

in different cultures might reveal the extent

to which networks and com munities of

practice have formed and are active in

knowledge exchange. Practitioners need a

rigorous understanding, grounded in a

particular dis cipline, if they are to be able to

access and absorb the results of new

research on environmental building

techniques. However, they need more than

this. They also require a work environment

in which there is a Sharing Knowledge about

Environmental Building Techniques 51

critical mass of like-minded, qualified

practitioners capable of accessing f indings

from research and interacting with those in

other communities of practice (Gann, 2001).

This environment needs to be structured and

resourced in such a way that encourages

new ideas to be tried and tested. One might

expect that firms and organisations that

exhibit dynamic capa bilities are better at

both generating new knowledge and

absorbing ideas from elsewhere. These firms

are likely to be acquisitive in terms of their

search for new knowledge, and they may

scan global networks in order to gain access

to new ideas. With regard to the specific

issues of knowledge about environmental

building techniques, one might expect to

observe different practices in dif ferent

regions. These practices might be classified

in terms of approaches taken in the context

of particular climate, geology and social and

eco nomic conditions. There are many

unknowns in this area of research and

practice, and it is unlikely that the notion of

single ‘best practice’ knowl edge transfer is

relevant. Under these conditions,

differences in approach and outcome are

essential, and a healthy tension between

approaches may give rise to the kind of

creative abrasion that leads to new ideas.

The project-based nature of work in the

design and production of the built

environment makes it necessary for

professionals to work in teams and act as

systems integrators, sharing knowledge with

other team members. They should therefore

be well placed to share and exchange

knowledge with other professionals.

However, there are many structural impedi

ments to realising this, because of the nature

of the specific organisational processes

found in many construction projects. There

are often few incen tives and many obstacles

to knowledge exchange, particularly in adver

sarial processes, although some work

environments – such as those based on

alliances and partnering – may be more

suited to knowledge sharing (Barlow et al.,

1998). A number of research questions

develop from the ideas presented here. In

particular, it may be of interest to explore

how designers and engineers learn through

working on projects and what skills they

have developed for problem solving in areas

associated with environmental building tech

niques in different regions. Conclusions This

chapter has argued that it is not possible to

identify commonly agreed definitions, let

alone strive for commonly defined actions

and solutions 52 Buildings, Culture and

Environment relating to sustainability in the

built environment. However, plurality is

important because it stimulates discussion,

innovation and exchange as well as providing

for specific contextual circumstances. There

are differ ent definitions of and approaches

to environmental building techniques. The

common issue is the need to tackle social

and environmental sustainability whilst

encouraging economic activity. This

integration implies developing new ideas to

help people to make and implement

decisions. Wider participation in decision

making, involving those who will live in and

use the built environment, is one commonly

agreed feature of response around the

world. All of this, in turn, implies that more

knowledge exchange will occur at a number

of different levels (project, organisation and

communities of practice) and scales (local,

regional and international). This must be

achieved within regulatory regimes, using

available skills and capabilities created by

particular national systems. Moreover,

knowl edge exchange has to be realised in a

project-based environment where there are

many discontinuities in information flows

between projects and professional groups,

and within and between organisations. More

sys tematic research is needed about how

project-based organisations develop and use

knowledge and, in particular, how they

acquire, capture, assimi late and act upon

ideas from outside their normal mode of

operations. This is likely to raise further

questions about the education and capabil

ities of individuals within local and regional

communities of practice to acquire, filter,

test and adapt ‘foreign’ information and

technologies. Much can be learnt from

exploring ideas and approaches found in

differ ent cultures. To do this, organisations

need their own technical capabili ties in

order to understand knowledge developed

elsewhere: absorptive capacity. But they

require more than this if they are to keep

abreast of changes in environmental building

techniques. They will need the capac ity to

act upon new knowledge, changing

technical, organisational and managerial

practices: dynamic capabilities. This concept

was developed to explain the methods by

which firms and organisations create and

capture new ideas and use these to their

strategic advantage in environ ments of

rapid technological change (Teece and

Pisano, 1994; Teece et al., 1998). The

capacity to adapt to new knowledge is

shaped by firms’ assets, resources and

routines. However, such assets and routines

can lead to path dependency and lock-in,

particularly where conditions of increasing

returns exist. Dorothy Leonard explains this

in terms of core capabilities and core

rigidities (Leonard-Barton, 1995). She argues

that firms can Sharing Knowledge about

Environmental Building Techniques 53

become locked in to outmoded practices

when external conditions change. What

were once core capabilities (for example, the

ability to design complex variable air velocity

air-conditioning systems) become core

rigidities, because demand has changed

towards buildings with passive ventilation to

meet growing concerns about

environmental impact. The challenge for

those involved in environmental building

tech niques is to maintain the capability to

acquire, assimilate and apply new

knowledge without creating such rigidities.

There are increasing pressures driving the

need for cross-cultural exchanges of building

and design knowledge. These are not solely

based on requirements to design and

produce buildings that are sensitive to the

environment. However, issues relating to

global environmental change may have

nuances that create additional problems for

knowledge exchange – for example, those

associated with particular local climate,

geological conditions, the nature of national

regulations and their local interpretation,

local user acceptance, appropriate

technologies, manage ment capabilities, etc.

Designers, planners and developers need to

redis cover the significance of working within

the limits of their ‘bio-region’ and use local

feedback loops. It is not yet clear how much

of this knowl edge can be transferred out of

the context that created it

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